2) Call (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your Congressman's office

3) Say -
Hi, my name is [your name] from [your state].

I would like you to pass the message on to [Your Congressman] that I would like him/her to sign on to the "Pocan/Salmon Dear Colleague Letter".

I use Kratom for [whatever you use it for] and it's safe. It's not a recreational drug. Hundreds of thousands of Americans do too. Research needs to be done before this natural herb is banned. Please have him/her sign the "Pocan/Salmon" Dear Colleague letter.

What it’s like to be high on kratom, according to the people who use itit will ban the kratom plant for two years because it can produce effects similar to opiates. Although it's been used for centuries in Southeast Asia, its use is relatively new in the United States, spurred in large part by users sharing reports of their experiences with the drug on online forums.

One of the most well-known of those forums is the website Erowid.org, an "online encyclopedia of psychoactive substances," whose founders were profiled in the New Yorker last year. At Erowid, users of everything from caffeine to heroin can submit first-person reports of their experiences with drugs. These "trip reports" are reviewed by moderators, categorized thematically ("bad trips," "glowing experiences," etc.) and published on the website.

The reports are used by both researchers and drug users seeking out information on emerging substances or new use trends in established substances.

The website includes 286 user-submitted reports detailing experiences with kratom, either alone or in combination with other drugs. These reports were the subject of a study published last year in the journal Psychoactive Drugs. As authors Marc Swogger and his colleagues note, there has been "little scientific research into the short- and long-term effects of kratom in humans, and much of the information available is anecdotal."

Short of rigorous studies into the drug's effects, Erowid's archives represent the next-best thing.

Swogger and his colleagues read all of the kratom experience reports available on the site at the time — 198 of them, which they whittled down to 161 by tossing out multiple reports submitted by the same user. Then they categorized the reports according to the individuals' overall experiences, positive and negative — euphoria, pain relief, nausea, itching, etc.

Chart it all out, and here's what Erowid's universe of kratom use looks like:

"In sum," the study concludes, "our findings suggest that the subjective effects of kratom are generally mild and pleasant, with some important negative physical side-effects, including what appears to be a mild (i.e., relative to opiates) dependence syndrome."

How do these self-reported effects compare with those of other drugs, legal and otherwise? It's tough to say. Swogger et. al. didn't run the same analysis for other substances on Erowid. But it's possible to get some sense of the range of site users' experiences for different drugs by looking at the ratio of negative to positive experience reports for each drug.

For each substance listed on Erowid, there are a number of experience categories that are unequivocally negative -- "difficult experiences," "bad trips," "health problems," "train wrecks and trip disasters" and "addiction & habituation." Similarly, other categories indicate positive reports: "glowing experiences," "mystical experiences," "health benefits" and "medical use." Still other categories, like "first time" and "retrospective/summary" don't denote any positive or negative experience.

For a handful of common drugs, legal and illegal, I tallied the number of reports falling under the positive and negative categories. Then, to correct for the fact that some drugs, like marijuana, generate many more experience reports than others, I expressed the numbers as a ratio: For each positive experience reported for the drug, how many negative experiences are there?

But by far the highest ratio of bad-to-good experiences can be found among the site's alcohol users, who submit nearly 13 negative reports for every positive one.

Key point here: This isn't a scientific assessment of drug effects, or relative harm, by any means. Erowid users aren't representative of the general population. People who go to the site are by definition looking for information on novel psychoactive experiences. They may be predisposed to feel negatively toward "traditional" highs, like alcohol.

But what these numbers do tell us is that within a fairly large and diverse community of drug users online, reports of negative experiences with kratom — including addiction and dependency — are relatively rare compared to other, more familiar drugs.

The more rigorous deep-dive into kratom's effects by Marc Swogger and his colleagues suggest that the drug's effects are "generally mild and pleasant," with a risk of some side effects, including a risk of dependency.

The DEA itself has admitted that kratom likely isn't deserving of the DEA's schedule 1 designation, reserved for only the most dangerous drugs.

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To really understand the drug and its effects, risks and possible benefits, more quality research needs to be done on it. But with the DEA's plan to place it in schedule 1, some say that research will be difficult to do.

DEA: No Timetable for Kratom Ban
September 29, 2016
By Pat Anson, Editor

A spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says there is no timetable yet for kratom to be formally classified as a Schedule I controlled substance – a move that would make the sale and possession of the herb a felony.

“I don’t have a timetable. It could be this week, could be in the future, I just don’t know,” DEA spokesman Rusty Payne told Pain News Network.

Since the DEA announced its plans on August 30, online kratom suppliers have hurriedly shipped orders to deplete their inventory and tens of thousands of consumers have stocked up on the herb, which many use to treat chronic pain and other medical conditions.

The letter was drafted by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the powerful chair of the Senate Finance Committee, who has long maintained an interest in supporting the dietary supplement industry.

All of this has apparently made the DEA think twice about scheduling kratom, at least for the time being.

“What we’re hearing from the DEA today is that it’s not going to happen tomorrow (Friday), but that it’s still going to happen,” said Susan Ash, founder of the American Kratom Association, a consumer group that promotes the use of kratom for medical reasons.

“I’m hoping and praying for some kind of negotiation or compromise. But it sounds like the DEA has dug in because they’re trying to save face. The level of calls that they are receiving and the level of complaints there are receiving is nothing like ever before. We are not a bunch a bunch of drugged out people. If we were, we wouldn’t be on the phone to DEA, congress people and our senators pleading with them to step in and get a delay.”

Acting on the advice of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the DEA moved to classify kratom as a Schedule I substance – alongside heroin, LSD and marijuana – without any public notice or comment. The DEA maintains that kratom, which comes from the leaves of a tree that grows in Southeast Asia, poses “an imminent hazard to public safety” and has been linked to several deaths.

However, in a survey of over 6,000 kratom consumers by Pain News Networkand the American Kratom Association, 98 percent said kratom was not a harmful or dangerous substance and 95% said banning the herb will have a harmful effect on society. The vast majority said they use the herb in teas and supplements to treat chronic pain, anxiety, depression, addiction or other medical issues. And many say they will continue using kratom even it is scheduled as a controlled substance.

“We need to be very careful about what we put into Schedule I, especially with limited data. I think that’s a huge mistake,” says John Burke, president of Pharmaceutical Diversion Education, which educates law enforcement and healthcare professionals about prescription drug abuse and diversion.

“What if it’s a legitimate drug that can help people? And now we’re going to make criminals out of them. I just think it’s awfully fast. I would hope that if it is Schedule I that it is given a huge window of research and experimentation. To me, if 6,000 people say it’s helping me, that tells me there’s a promise there and we ought to be exploiting it.”

If and when kratom is turned into a controlled substance, it will fall in line behind a long list of illegal drugs the DEA is already struggling – some would say failing -- to control.